The New Yorker: The Revenge of Rand Paul

[tsai3904]

The Revenge of Rand Paul

The Senator has fought to go mainstream with the ideology that he shares with his father. How far can that strategy take him?

BY RYAN LIZZA

At 8 A.M. on a Friday in late July, Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, stood before a predominantly African-American audience of about a hundred at an Urban League conference in Cincinnati. An ophthalmologist before he was a senator, Paul has spent much of his career in surgical scrubs, but he was dressed nattily, in a charcoal suit and a red rep tie. His typically unkempt curls, which give him the look of a philosophy student lost in thought, were restrained with the help of a hair product. His aides had been promoting the talk for weeks, as part of a yearlong effort to reintroduce himself to political constituencies—on both the left and the right—that may have reason to distrust him. In the next few months, he is planning to deliver a major speech on foreign policy; like race, it is an area in which Paul has encountered strident opposition.

...

In some respects, Paul is to Republicans in 2014 what Barack Obama was to Democrats in 2006: the Party’s most prized fund-raiser and its most discussed senator, willing to express opinions unpopular within his party, and capable of energizing younger voters. The Republican National Committee, which in 2008 refused to allow his father, Ron Paul, to speak at its Convention, recently solicited donations by offering supporters a chance to have lunch with Rand Paul. The only potential obstacle to a Paul Presidential candidacy in 2016 is his wife, Kelley. Douglas Stafford, Paul’s top political adviser, said, “Unless Kelley says no, he’s running.” Steve Munisteri, the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, told me this summer, “He is objectively one of the three most likely people to get the nomination.”

...

More:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...enge-rand-paul

[WD-NY]

Sigh... illustrations/graphics are pretty much what The New Yorker is most famous for (well that and epically long articles).

and here's what they came up with for Rand... (which - surprise surprise - is the usual unflattering crapola the establishment media puts out (especially compared to the beyond flattering illustrations they drew for Obama/draw for liberals).

**Update: Very interesting radio interviews by Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza the author of the article) - even mentions RonPaulForums lol:

[tsai3904]

Jesse Benton:

Jesse Benton told me that the foreign-policy differences between Rand and his father stem from Rand’s facing the realities of the world. “If Ron were President, he would have had to govern like Rand,” Benton said. “Ron is much more of a purist about non-intervention, and that’s fine, but in many ways Ron’s foreign policy can exist only in an academic sense. It’s just not possible for the United States to be non-interventionist. It’s not much of a difference on principle, but a much bigger difference in practice.”

[Original_Intent]

Jesse Benton: weasel at large

FIFY

[economics102]

Jesse Benton: the gift that keeps on taking.

[idiom]

Paul recalled his early childhood as carefree. “I rode my bike to school every day from age five to age fourteen,” he told me. “It was a small town—you could go anywhere.” He added, “You were completely independent.”

This idyll was the result of New Deal-style central planning. In the nineteen-forties, Dow Chemical, with help from the federal government, created Lake Jackson to house employees of its nearby magnesium plant. Strict zoning regulations kept industry away, and the roads were laid out so that the most heavily trafficked highways bypassed the city, leaving quiet, tree-lined streets in the residential interior.

I love logic like this.

Paul lost his 1974 House race but ran again in early 1976, in a special election, after the retirement of the incumbent who had defeated him. “I can see the whole system coming to a collapse in three or four years,” he said during a speech in January of that year, echoing Mises’s apocalyptic message that the financial system was on the edge of ruin. “No system has survived on only paper for currency.”

This is fantastic.

Reagan narrowly lost the nomination, and Ron Paul lost his House seat in November. He contested the election, but the House of Representatives rejected his case, which in part rested on allegations that felons had voted illegally.

Wow I am loving this.

The editorial, Rand wrote, “unfortunately typifies the reasoning behind every piece of anti-discrimination legislation passed over the past few decades. The mentality behind such legislation ignores one of the basic, inalienable rights of man—the right to discriminate.”

This is a right proper hit piece, this is.

Unlike his father, Paul gladly accepted Medicare and Medicaid, which eventually accounted for fifty-five per cent of his patients.

More of those non-existent differences....

In 1994, he and Kelley bought an acre and a half of land and built a house in a new gated community called Rivergreen. The Pauls liked the eighteen-acre man-made Sunfish Lake, which was stocked with bluegills, but Rand balked at the twenty-one pages of restrictions that Rivergreen placed on homeowners. Only brick, stone, or stucco houses with at least three thousand square feet of living space were allowed. Gravel driveways, clotheslines, and piles of firewood visible to neighbors were forbidden. Aboveground swimming pools were banned. If Paul wanted to change the style of his mailbox, he had to get approval from Rivergreen’s three-member Architectural Committee. “He didn’t much like that,” Jim Skaggs, Rivergreen’s developer, told me. “He said, ‘I bought the property, it’s my property!’ ” Paul eventually relented, and built a four-bedroom, red brick Colonial with an indoor swimming pool. The libertarian who a few years earlier had railed against suffocating conformity at Baylor had settled into a neighborhood where he wasn’t allowed to choose the exterior of his own home.

It was a good moment for Rand to take a break from practicing medicine. Downing and Paul disagreed about how their practice was run and decided to part ways. The biggest fight was over “some differences over charges and taxes,” Downing told me. “He was a little bit more interested in avoiding taxes than I was. And I was afraid he was pushing things a little bit.” He thought that Paul “was taking more deductions than was reasonable.” Paul’s spokesman said, “The Senator does not remember the dissolution of their partnership over a tax issue.”

This bit here is actually pretty typical on An-Caps meeting reality. Its not freedom to do what they like that they are seeking, its mostly just removal of taxes. They are quite happy to have 21 pages of restrictions on their property. Almost any An-Cap vision of Utopia includes *massive* screeds of contracts. Mostly its a world with huge restrictions on personal freedom, but no taxes, so that makes everything okay.

Republicans have generally tried one of two approaches. One, best demonstrated by the former congressman and 1996 Vice-Presidential candidate Jack Kemp, is to campaign in black communities with a generic message of free-market conservatism and other traditional Republican values. The message has often helped such candidates get attention and praise from the media but few African-American votes. Today, a candidate associated with this strategy is Paul Ryan, whose anti-poverty agenda draws on the ideas pushed by Kemp, for whom he once worked.

Calling Ryan out here which is pretty good.

McCain told me that, if Rand Paul is the Republican nominee for President in 2016, he will support him. “I’ve seen him grow and I’ve seen him mature and I’ve seen him become more centrist. I know that if he were President or a nominee I could influence him, particularly some of his views and positions on national security. He trusts me particularly on the military side of things, so I could easily work with him. It wouldn’t be a problem.”

HOLY BALLS! An endorsement from McCain. Maybe Rand's plan is really working?

Cosby related a surprising conversation that he had with Paul not long ago at Simmons: “He said that if he could he would shut down a lot of these prisons, and he specifically said that the money saved from mass incarceration would be re-channelled toward job training. Now, I am one hundred per cent sure he said that to me.” Cosby went on, “I was blown away, because I’m thinking, This doesn’t sound like libertarianism to me. This sounds like big government. Libertarianism means redirecting money back to the taxpayers. If he made a statement like that publicly, and stood by it, I don’t know where he will stand within the Republican Party and the libertarians, but that would shake things up in the black community.” He repeated Paul’s statement to me three times. “He said the thousands and thousands of African-Americans that have gone to jail because of mandatory sentencing should be released and the money saved should go for a job-training program. Whoa!”

You break it, you bought it? Fair enough.

Kevin Cosby had hoped that Paul would use his Urban League appearance to publicly endorse a bold new job-training program for ex-felons that Paul had described to him privately, but it was absent from the speech.

Awwwww.

In August, John Downing accompanied Paul to Guatemala to perform pro-bono eye surgeries. Downing told me he thinks that Paul would be a good President, but he complained that Paul, in an effort to placate social conservatives, had endorsed the so-called “personhood amendment.” That would grant a fertilized egg the full rights of an individual and make abortions, I.U.D.s, and the morning-after pill illegal. “They’re going to kill him about it if he doesn’t figure out a way to get away from it,” Downing said. “He’s going to lose half or more of women immediately once they find out what that would do to birth control.”

Banning IUDs and ECP's.... yeah in 2016? Seriously?

Benton said, “There’s a sub-layer that’s a very, very loud minority of supporters, and nothing is ever going to be right unless Rand is on a regular basis standing on the floor of the Senate smashing the establishment.” He went on, “They want Ted Cruz on steroids, and that’s just not going to work in the long term.”

In case anyone forgot why we love Benton...

[mad cow]

“I rode my bike to school every day from age five to age fourteen,” he told me. “It was a small town—you could go anywhere.” He added, “You were completely independent.”

This idyll was the result of New Deal-style central planning. In the nineteen-forties, Dow Chemical, with help from the federal government, created Lake Jackson to house employees of its nearby magnesium plant.

Yeah,right.

How about the millions of kids of the same generation and older who rode their bikes to school in other towns from ages five to fourteen?
Was every town in America back then a result of idyllic New Deal-style central planning?

[idiom]

Yeah,right.

How about the millions of kids of the same generation and older who rode their bikes to school in other towns from ages five to fourteen?
Was every town in America back then a result of idyllic New Deal-style central planning?

Just that particular place. It was more corporate town though. Again 'libertarians' generally don't have a problem with central planning. It works really well for militaries and companies. Large central governments, however, become insensitive to democracy due to distance and scale.

[mad cow]

Just that particular place. It was more corporate town though. Again 'libertarians' generally don't have a problem with central planning. It works really well for militaries and companies. Large central governments, however, become insensitive to democracy due to distance and scale.

The idyllic nature of Lake Jackson had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it was a company town or New Deal-style central planning.If anything,it was idyllic in spite of these handicaps.

Central planning had nothing to do with it.There were tons of totally unplanned towns just as idyllic at the time that the author of this piece doesn't deem important enough to mention where riding your bike to school was common not only at the period he is talking about but long before the New Deal even existed.

It would have made just as much sense (none) to say that this idyll was the result of the town's name starting with an L or containing eleven letters.

[Shane Harris]

Sigh... illustrations/graphics are pretty much what The New Yorker is most famous for (well that and epically long articles).

and here's what they came up with for Rand... (which - surprise surprise - is the usual unflattering crapola the establishment media puts out (especially compared to the beyond flattering illustrations they drew for Obama/draw for liberals).

I don't mind the image. Its a pretty good resemblance for a stylized cartoon portrait. Way better than National Review's caricature of Ron.

[Shane Harris]

Still a hit piece though, naturally

[Inkblots]

Still a hit piece though, naturally

Yeah, they pretty obviously picked some episodes to focus on because they think they make Rand look bad, but all in all it was still a really interesting read.

And there's some positive stuff in there, too, like the fact that this kills the whole "Aqua Buddha" thing stone dead by getting everyone involved on the record that nothing untoward happened, and it was just an inside joke on the swim team.

Also, that idea to redirect funding from prisons to training programs sounds like a real winner to me. I hope Rand comes and and endorses it soon. Of course, I hope the Red Team base doesn't get too upset by it.

Poor Rand, I'd not be able to jump through all the hoops and thread all the needles he does for anything. He must really love this country, to put up with getting crapped on by left, right and center all the time when he could be back home practicing medicine and not getting hate-bombed all the time.

[WD-NY]

I don't mind the image. Its a pretty good resemblance for a stylized cartoon portrait. Way better than National Review's caricature of Ron.

Technically/stylistically, the illustration is A+

It's the scowling/frowning that ruins it.

[Lucille]

I think the frowns fit the piece, and the mood of most libertarians.

Return of the Aqua Buddha! Rand Paul Survives Another Long Magazine Feature
http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/29/re...rand-paul-surv

The New Yorker has published an 11,753-word article on Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and his political navigations on the way to a 2016 White House run. The tepid, conclusion-averse nature of Ryan Lizza's piece—as opposed to more bold profiles in recent years in the New York Times Magazine and The New Republic—is encapsulated in the subhed: "The Senator has fought to go mainstream with the ideology that he shares with his father. How far can that strategy take him?"

While the article ends with some late-breaking pessimism on that question, in the form of quotes from observers doubtful about the salability of Paul's positions on foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion, the piece begins by hailing the potential breakthrough nature of his candidacy:
[...]
Much of the rest of the article is what you've read before about Rand Paul, only with more detail. Aqua Buddha makes a comeback, only this time GQ's unnamed target of Paul's collegiate pranking gets named, and quoted (saying "I would not use that as a specific reason not to vote for him"). Lizza also provides some important new anecdotal evidence that Paul's best college buddy was fond of doing nitrous hits (whee!).

We hear more about Rand's interest in campaigning for his father, but we get some extra sauce about his talent for the job. Paul's history of making philosophically-based arguments against the government prohibiting private-sector discrimination gets a few more citations (sample bit of 1982 writing: While "eliminating racial and sexual prejudice" had "noble aspiration," such laws "necessarily utilize the ignoble means of coercive force"). And there is the requisite people-in-his-world-have-played-the-race-card angle, complete with references to Ron Paul's newsletters, Jack Hunter's past, and Lysander Spooner's fanclub. But as indicated by the article's lead anecdote of Paul speaking in front of the Urban League, Lizza seems much less convinced by this critique than New York Times writers Sam Tanenhaus and Jim Rutenberg were in their dot-connecting exercise this January.

After the jump, some bits of particular interest to Reason readers...

[brushfire]

Jesse Benton:

Jesse Benton... Who was that again? Didnt he play Judas in "Jesus Christ Superstar"?

[JohnGalt23g]

Sigh... illustrations/graphics are pretty much what The New Yorker is most famous for (well that and epically long articles).

and here's what they came up with for Rand... (which - surprise surprise - is the usual unflattering crapola the establishment media puts out (especially compared to the beyond flattering illustrations they drew for Obama/draw for liberals).

I like it. AmeriPaul Gothic...

[Matt Collins]

I only got halfway through it

[Pawn3d]

Still a hit piece though, naturally

What part? I didn't see it that way. I read it as "Rand Paul is taking the White House, get over it"

That illustration is awesome and is now my desktop background.

[thoughtomator]

Jesse Benton: the gift that keeps on taking.

the herpes of political campaign operatives

[givemeliberty2010]

I really liked reading about Rand Paul's love for debate from th time he was young. The part about evolution makes me hopeful that he is not another anti-science extremist.

[Matt Collins]

I really liked reading about Rand Paul's love for debate from th time he was young. The part about evolution makes me hopeful that he is not another anti-science extremist.

He is a medical doctor who does eye surgery. Do you think he is "anti science"???

[Natural Citizen]

In the next few months, he is planning to deliver a major speech on foreign policy; like race, it is an area in which Paul has encountered strident opposition.

More:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...enge-rand-paul

Foreign policy is a very broad subject. Will have to wait and see if junior demonstrates competence with regard to the subject. Foreign policy isn't just about war in the middle east and the terrorism that comes with it. It just isn't. Not by a long shot. As well, isolationism isn't limited to combat or military endeavors. Economically, we're isolating ourselves from a large fraction of the world's nations at the moment. One would almost want to flirt with the notion that this is intentional. Of course, we'd want to place scrutiny on those with whom political advisory roles are held. Sadly, the former is what too many understand foreign policy to be and relegate themselves to a very shallow position on the subject. Of course, many elected and prospective electees enjoy a comfort zone such as this simply because they never have to demonstrate a broader understanding. They simply aren't asked broader questions with regard to foreign policy. Media plays a role in that but it is what it is. A kind of cultural cluster fudge.

The use of such language as "strident opposition" is rather misleading if he chooses to discuss the topic from within the mainstream, cultural narrative that is so rampant as a result of inadequate, perhaps malfeasant, models within contemporary media. I suspect that if he did then any opposition would be consistent with the elementary nature of that which they presumably would oppose.

[givemeliberty2010]

He is a medical doctor who does eye surgery. Do you think he is "anti science"???

I never had any reason to suspect him personally, but I am always cautious about people with Tea Party connections. Medical doctors are not immune; they can be anti-evolution, as well. Also, I believe that Rand Paul's father has expressed skepticism about evolution, so it wasn't a given (and it's still not) that he wouldn't express embarrassingly unscientific views.

[FriedChicken]

I never had any reason to suspect him personally, but I am always cautious about people with Tea Party connections. Medical doctors are not immune; they can be anti-evolution, as well. Also, I believe that Rand Paul's father has expressed skepticism about evolution, so it wasn't a given (and it's still not) that he wouldn't express embarrassingly unscientific views.

Ron and Rand are both evolutionists. However, if that is your litmus test for being pro or anti science you're an idiot.
Some of the greatest advocates for science in our history went against the mainstream scientific thought - so "going with the flow" being in your criteria is absurd.

If you're confident in the going ons 73mil years ago you're making quite a few non-scientific assumptions. As science is largely observation ... and there wasn't anyone around to observe it.

Whatever, I'm not going to derail the thread on this. I just can't stand people with their nose in the air with the audacity to say that anyone who questions popular scientific theories is "anti-science".

[Natural Citizen]

I'd prefer to show more concern for junior's position on applied sciences. Fracking. Gmos. That kind of thing. Some other stuff that is equally relative to geo-politics. Too often we see representatives both elected as well as prospective discuss the market/industry narrative with regard to these sciences/technologies/industries. Very seldom, if ever, do we hear them provide a position on the applicable science itself. If ever.

[Peace&Freedom]

Technically/stylistically, the illustration is A+

It's the scowling/frowning that ruins it.

Here's a quickie cheap graphics fix, with smiles on Rand and Ron:

[GunnyFreedom]

Ron and Rand are both evolutionists. However, if that is your litmus test for being pro or anti science you're an idiot.
Some of the greatest advocates for science in our history went against the mainstream scientific thought - so "going with the flow" being in your criteria is absurd.

If you're confident in the going ons 73mil years ago you're making quite a few non-scientific assumptions. As science is largely observation ... and there wasn't anyone around to observe it.

Whatever, I'm not going to derail the thread on this. I just can't stand people with their nose in the air with the audacity to say that anyone who questions popular scientific theories is "anti-science".

Not to mention that evolution vs creation has exactly zero to do with policy. That's like saying "I like everything he stands for but I can't vote for him because he buys the wrong brand of socks."

[LawnWake]

Having a small-government, tea party conservative who supports free markets and isn't anti-evolution is great. It opens up the party and the various free market ideologies to more (younger) people. The way Republicans have generally promoted the party as being anti-intellectual (viewing intellectualism as high brow, East coast liberal elitism -- many Republicans liked Bush cuz he came across as someone they could have a beer with and didn't project intellectual prowess) is almost suicidal to the right wing. Especially with an increasingly more educated populace. If you want libertarianism or classical liberalism to stand any chance and gaining more traction in the future, you would need to embrace intelletcualism. The right used to have a fairly strong intellectual tradition (come on, Hayek? Von Mises?), we would be wise to revive it and embrace it.

I'm all for questioning the scientific consensus when it's founded. But the thing with anti-evolutionism is that none of the arguments that were ever used to support it have ever been good, informed or scientific. Is there a chance that someone can ever come up with a good critique of evolution? Sure, but the odds are so abysmally small that if Rand were to be anti-evolution, then the odds would be so abysmally high that he's spouting nonsense, that's fairly safe to assume he would be full of crap.

[GunnyFreedom]

Having a small-government, tea party conservative who supports free markets and isn't anti-evolution is great. It opens up the party and the various free market ideologies to more (younger) people. The way Republicans have generally promoted the party as being anti-intellectual (viewing intellectualism as high brow, East coast liberal elitism -- many Republicans liked Bush cuz he came across as someone they could have a beer with and didn't project intellectual prowess) is almost suicidal to the right wing. Especially with an increasingly more educated populace. If you want libertarianism or classical liberalism to stand any chance and gaining more traction in the future, you would need to embrace intelletcualism. The right used to have a fairly strong intellectual tradition (come on, Hayek? Von Mises?), we would be wise to revive it and embrace it.

I'm all for questioning the scientific consensus when it's founded. But the thing with anti-evolutionism is that none of the arguments that were ever used to support it have ever been good, informed or scientific. Is there a chance that someone can ever come up with a good critique of evolution? Sure, but the odds are so abysmally small that if Rand were to be anti-evolution, then the odds would be so abysmally high that he's spouting nonsense, that's fairly safe to assume he would be full of crap.

If young people seriously decide whether or not to vote for someone based on whether they believe in evolution over creation, then those young people should sit out elections until they grow a little wisdom. Evolution vs creation means literally nothing to government policy. Are they also going to vote based on whether a candidate prefers Adidas over Nike?

[LawnWake]

If young people seriously decide whether or not to vote for someone based on whether they believe in evolution over creation, then those young people should sit out elections until they grow a little wisdom. Evolution vs creation means literally nothing to government policy. Are they also going to vote based on whether a candidate prefers Adidas over Nike?

Many of those people want someone they consider an educated, capable and rational person in charge and are thus rather skeptical of someone who finds a literal interpretation of Genesis a rational explanation for why we're here. So they'll wonder "if they're irrational about evolution, what else are they irrational about?" which could translate to irrational policy. I don't entirely agree with that, I would only vote according to the candidate's adherence to the non-aggression principle, but I can empathize with the position.

You could say that they should sit out out elections, but they don't. So it doesn't really matter what you or I think. Having Rand Paul make pro-evolution statements is a good thing and opens up the party as a whole to a wider audience. Besides, it's still a step-up from the modern Republican tradition of voting based on "how much is the candidate like my average-in-every-way neighbor?"